Banks didn’t bother reminding him how it was teamwork and hard procedural slog that had led them to Owen Pierce. “The case obviously wasn’t solid enough,” he said. “Dr. Tasker wasn’t very good, for a start. Even Glendenning wasn’t up to his usual form. Who knows? Maybe they were right?”
“Who?”
“The jury.”
Stott shook his head. His ears seemed to flap with the motion. “No. I can’t accept that. He did it. I know he did. I feel it in my bones. He murdered that poor girl, and he got away with it. You know, if we’d got the evidence from Michelle Chappel in, then we’d have got a conviction for certain. The judge made a hell of a mistake there.”
“Perhaps. Did you see her there, by the way?”
“Where? Who?”
“Michelle Chappel. In court. I don’t know if she’s been there all along but she was in the public gallery for the verdict. She’d let her hair grow since last November, too. Looked more like Deborah Harrison than ever. She was even wearing a maroon blazer. She was talking to that reporter from the News of the World.”
“See what I mean,” said Stott. “If we’d been able to bring out that connection, her evidence of what he did to her, there’s no jury in the country wouldn’t have convicted Pierce.”
“Maybe so, but that’s not the point, Barry.”
Stott flushed. “Excuse me, but I think it is. A guilty man has just walked out of that courtroom after committing one of the most horrible murders I have ever investigated, and you tell me that’s not the point. I’m sorry, but-”
“I mean it’s not the point I’m trying to make.”
Stott frowned. “I don’t follow.”
“Why is Michelle Chappel so keen to stick the knife in Pierce?”
“Oh, I see. Well, maybe because he beat her up. Or perhaps because he tried to strangle her? Or could being raped by him after he knocked her out have upset her just a little a bit?”
Banks sipped some more beer. “All right, Barry, give it a rest. I catch your drift. Perhaps you’re right. But why hang around after her evidence was declared inadmissible? Just to watch him suffer? Why take time off work?”
Stott frowned. “What makes you think there’s a connection?”
“It’s just odd, that’s all.” Banks stubbed out his cigarette and drank some more beer. “Her hair was short when we talked to her.”
“Women’s hair,” said Stott with a shrug. “Who knows anything about that?”
Banks smiled. “Good point. Another pint? Half, rather?”
“Should we?”
“Yes, we damn well should. Jimmy Riddle’s going to be out for our blood. Might as well put off the inevitable as long as possible.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll have another half of shandy. Then I’ll have to be off.”
Banks edged through the crowd to the bar, looking at his reflection in the antique mirror at the back while he waited. Not too bad for his early forties, he thought, still slim and trim, despite the pints and the poor diet; a few lines around the eyes, maybe, and a touch a gray at the temples, but that was all. Besides, they added character, Sandra said.
He intended to part company with Stott after the next drink and visit an old friend while he was in Leeds: Pamela Jeffreys, a violist with the English Northern Philharmonic orchestra. About a year ago, she had been badly hurt in an attack for which Banks still blamed himself. She wasn’t back in the orchestra yet, but she was working hard and getting there fast, and this afternoon, she was playing a chamber concert at the university’s music department. It might go some small way towards making up for the disappointment in court this morning.
He might also, while he was so close, drop in at the Classical Record Shop and see about the Samuel Barber song collection he had been wanting for a while. Listening to Dawn Upshaw singing “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” on the drive down had made him think about it.
On the other hand, the not-guilty verdict changed things. While he was in Leeds, he would also phone DI Ken Blackstone and see about having a chat with one of Jelacic’s card-playing cronies. He might even have another word with Jelacic himself.
Though the Crown would probably appeal the verdict, as far as Banks was concerned it was back to the drawing-board for the time being, a drawing-board he was beginning to feel he should never have left in the first place. And Ive Jelacic was certainly high on his list of loose ends.
“Damn that judge,” said Stott when he had thanked Banks for the drink. “Just thinking about it makes my blood boil.”
“I’m not convinced Michelle Chappel’s testimony would have helped as much as you think, Barry,” Banks said.
“Why not? At least it proves he had homicidal tendencies towards young women of Deborah Harrison’s physical type.”
“It proves nothing of the kind,” said Banks. “Okay, I’ll admit, I was as excited about the psychological possibilities it opened up as you were. And, yes, I was bloody annoyed that Simmonds excluded it. But now I think about it, looking at her in court, I’m not so sure.”
Stott scratched the back of his left ear and frowned. “Why not?”
“Because I think that defense lawyer, Shirley Castle, would have made mincemeat of her, that’s why. In the final analysis, she’d have had the jury believing that Michelle Chappel was lying, that she did what she did out of pure vindictiveness towards Pierce, for revenge, because she harbored a grudge for the way he treated her.”
“And rightly so, after what he did to her.”
“But don’t you see how it would discredit her testimony, Barry, make her seem like a lying bitch? Especially with such criticisms coming from another woman. That could be pretty damning. She’s good is Ms. Castle. I’ve been up against her before. She’d have made sure that Pierce convinced them with his version of that night’s events. And if they believed that he had simply been warding off the frenzied attack of a hysterical woman, then he could have gained their sympathy.”
Stott took off his glasses and polished them with a spotless handkerchief. “I still think it would have helped us get a conviction.”
“Well there’s no way of knowing now, is there?”
“I suppose not,” Stott said glumly. “What do we do now?”
“There’s not much more we can do.”
“Reopen the investigation?”
Banks sipped some beer. “Oh, yes. I think so, don’t you? After all, Barry, someone out there killed Deborah Harrison, and according to all the hallmarks, it looks very much like someone who might do it again.”
Chapter 13
I
Vjeko Batorac was out when Banks called in the afternoon, and a neighbor said he usually came home from work at about five-thirty. Ken Blackstone, who said Batorac was probably the most believable of Jelacic’s three card-playing cronies, had given Banks the address.
Grateful for the free time, Banks played truant; he went up to the university and spent a delightful hour listening to Vaughan Williams’s String Quartet No. 2.
And he was glad he did. As he watched and listened, all the stress and disappointment of the verdict, all his fears of having persecuted the wrong man in the first place, seemed to become as insubstantial as air, at least for a while.
As he watched Pamela Jeffreys play in the bright room, prisms of light all around, her glossy raven hair dancing, skin like burnished gold, the diamond stud in her right nostril flashing in the sun, he thought not for the first time
